Publisher: Z-Man Games
Players: 2-4 (five with expansion)
Play Time: 30-40 mins
Pandemic is a co-operative strategy board game in which players take the role of an elite, disease-fighting unit from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. Using a unique set of special abilities, the team must work together, travelling the globe, treating infections, and conducting research to prevent a series of deadly diseases spreading into a global Pandemic.
I picked up Pandemic a week or so ago, along with the 'On The Brink' expansion. I had heard a lot about it, and had high expectations - which were easily met. My first impression was just how good the game looked - a lot of work has gone into improving various pieces and designs for this 2013 edition.
I picked up Pandemic a week or so ago, along with the 'On The Brink' expansion. I had heard a lot about it, and had high expectations - which were easily met. My first impression was just how good the game looked - a lot of work has gone into improving various pieces and designs for this 2013 edition.
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| A large, but manageable number of components (plus: petri dishes!) |
Gameplay
Pandemic is a very simple game to learn, and pretty quick to play. Adopting winning strategy and tactics, however, is much more challenging! There is enough scope to vary the difficulty to remain fun and challenging for veterans and newbies alike.
Each turn, a player moves their character, driving or flying round the globe, generally focussing on limiting the damage the diseases are doing. Then, they draw two cards from the Player Deck. These are generally helpful things: city cards, which you need to collect in order to cure the diseases, but which can also be used for fast travel or constructing research centres; or action cards, special one-off but significant advantages. After this, they reveal a number of cards from the Infection Deck, and mark the resultant spread of the disease on the board.
The complications come in the form of Outbreaks and Epidemic cards. Outbreaks occur when disease in a city has reached saturation point, and spreads out to neighbouring cities (bringing you one step closer to losing the game). Epidemic cards are the fly in the ointment of the Player Deck. When drawn, they speed up the infection rate, and cause revealed city cards to be shuffled and placed on top of the deck. This speeds the game towards its sweaty, fevered conclusion.
I LOVE these mechanics. The simple-yet-elegant Epidemic mechanic causes the same cities to recur dangerously regularly, presenting an immediate and worrying threat. The one upside is that it at least helps you determine your current threat level, as you know which cards go back on top. The outbreaks can cause chain reactions, which is usually a very quick way to lose the game suddenly.
Challenge
I've mentioned losing the game a few times. As ever with cooperative games, it's you pitted against the game, and the game is holding all the cards. Too many outbreaks, over-wide spread of one disease, or drawing all of the player cards, cause you to lose. To win, you just need to cure all four diseases. It's that simple.
The challenge comes in acquiring enough cards of the correct colour, and getting them in the hands of one players. The restrictions on hand size and passing cards around make this difficult, but not too frustrating (without this, the game would simply be too easy). The difficulty is scalable, as you can set the number of epidemic cards in the player deck at the start of the game. Four for beginners, five for normal, up to seven for Legendary.
The challenge actually scales really well - adding more players means that you receive fewer cards at the start of the game. You have more people to control and manage outbreaks across the board, but it's much harder to get the right colour cards into one person's hands to cure the diseases quickly enough.
The challenge actually scales really well - adding more players means that you receive fewer cards at the start of the game. You have more people to control and manage outbreaks across the board, but it's much harder to get the right colour cards into one person's hands to cure the diseases quickly enough.
The 'On The Brink' expansion adds a few cool ways to ramp up the challenge, such as unexpected disease behaviour, a fifth, mutating disease, or a 'Bio-Terrorist' - one player working against the group to spread a new disease. I haven't really had the chance to try out most of these, but they look to change things up enough to keep the challenge high (if you need it!).
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| Pretty board, doomed world. |
Social
Pandemic is a nice social game. It's easy to learn, quick to set up, and can be played in easily less than an hour. I find that more casual game players, are, understandably, less keen to learn and play some of the epic 3-4 hour 'big box games' (love them though I do!), but Pandemic hits the sweet spot of being suitable for just about everyone.
The cooperative aspect is always a big tick in this area. Since everyone is working together, new players aren't trying to hold their own against more experience ones. People also strategise as a group, meaning that it's more relaxed, and a bit easier to chat during the game.
The one downside to this is that there's little to stop experienced players dictating everyone's moves. This pretty much defies the point of the game, though, so I think most reasonable players just won't do this. It's fine to plan together and make suggestions, but everyone has to have their own agency as a player, or you may as well just be playing it solo (though that is surprisingly fun!).
Overall
Pandemic is a very well-crafted game, with some simple but powerful mechanics that give it a real challenging edge with lots of replay value. This is definitely something that both seasoned gamers and those that prefer casual games can enjoy together.
Seriously, the game has won so many awards for a reason... This is definitely worth picking up, or finding a friend who owns a copy, so you can lose together in style.
Who's It For?
Pretty much everyone!
The Good
Simple, quick game which is accessible to all.
The Bad
You will lose a lot, and want to keep playing. Okay, so that's not actually a negative, but it's really hard to come up with one for this game.
Rating
(Five petri dishes, out of a possible five)
If you want to see more on Pandemic, check out the Tabletop episode:
Simple, quick game which is accessible to all.
The Bad
You will lose a lot, and want to keep playing. Okay, so that's not actually a negative, but it's really hard to come up with one for this game.
Rating
(Five petri dishes, out of a possible five)
If you want to see more on Pandemic, check out the Tabletop episode:
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